Time for Digital Logbook

JonH

JonH

Pre-takeoff checklist
Joined
Jan 21, 2017
Messages
481
Location
San Diego
Display Name
Display name:
JonH
I was in a voluntary evac zone for fires in Socal. I decided to run a little drill. Pack up stuff in the car and be prepared. The next day things settled down, and I unpacked the car. My flight bag was one of the last things to come back in the house, and I decided to organize it.

What do you know, my logbook was not in my flight bag. I searched for it and it was on a small bookshelf in my bedroom. Had the stuff hit the fan, there goes a lot of records, and some would be hard to replace. I figured that the best option for me was to take photos of each page, and store them in the cloud. So I did that. I used a file naming convention so the last page pic is replaced until that page is full, and then becomes read-only.

Do any online logbooks use pictures in addition to manually entering numbers?

I have some receipts, around half my hours worth, and scanned them in as PDF. If I were to lose the logbook, and printed the pics, is that legit for the FAA?
 
The Feds just care about what you need to log for currency and/or ratings. The rest isn't required to be recorded. You might send yourself an email of just those entries. If you lost your logbooks, or they burned, the Feds will accept photos or electrons.

Nothing magic about the cloud - data is still stored on magnetic or solid state media. There have been a few commercial cloud cluster f**ks, too.

If it's for your career, yeah, maybe go electronic - and have your own backup, on removable media. But for a non-pro? I personally reverted to a paper logbook; just quicker and more convenient.
 
MyFlightbook allows you to add pictures with each flight. It's the only electronic logbook I've used so can't comment about others. I tried keeping a parallel paper logbook for a while, but haven't written anything lately.
 
I use Foreflight with paper as a backup. Works great for this non-pro pilot.
 
ForeFlight and I’ll occasionally get an excel export of al the data. Can take pictures of endorsements, etc. can post in fight photos. Stopped using paper a year ago and am so glad I did
 
Myflightbook works for me,back it up with paper hard copy.
 
Thanks everyone. I'm not active enough to use subscription based stuff as of now. Next year will be different so I'll probably go with ForeFlight's solution.
 
Another happy myflightbook user here (it's also free).
 
I wish I had started using MyFlightBook earlier. I use it now for entry of flight time and then transfer to my paper logbook later. My paper logbook is the only place I have instructor signatures on specific flights. I took pictures of my endorsements to save in MFB. Possibly the best things about MFB is at-a-glance information about various types of flight currency, recent hours for insurance applications, and specific categories of hours for IACRA applications.

In the unlikely event that I lose both my paper logbook and my MFB data, I would still have my pilot certificate (or be able to get a replacement) and then I could get 100% current (and demonstrate that currency) by logging 6 solo takeoffs and landings (3 full stop night and 3 full stop taildragger), 6 instrument approaches, a hold, and (the dumbest of all) an intercept of a course. But since I don't have my commercial pilot certificate yet, I would also have to log all of those training and experience requirements over again, all the way back to the 250 hours total time. It would be a setback but not a dramatic one. The biggest thing I'd lose is signed proof that I got an hour of dual in a P-51.

But that does bring up an interesting question. If I lost my logbook and later applied for a commercial pilot certificate, does my logbook have to show all of the CPL requirements or just those in addition to the minimum requirements for my existing certificate and rating (PPL with ratings for ASEL and instrument airplane)? The PPL/IR requirements do vary if you are part 141, but absent proof that you went part 61 you could still apply the lower of the two requirements.

The FARs are generally written in the form "must have logged," so if you "must have logged," e.g., 50 hours PIC cross-country to get your instrument rating, of which at least 10 had to be in airplanes, then by having the instrument airplane rating on your PPL it is true for CPL purposes to say that you "must have logged" that time. Has anyone been unfortunate enough to have to find out how the FAA interprets this one? :)
 
iamtheari said:
But that does bring up an interesting question. If I lost my logbook and later applied for a commercial pilot certificate, does my logbook have to show all of the CPL requirements or just those in addition to the minimum requirements for my existing certificate and rating (PPL with ratings for ASEL and instrument airplane)? The PPL/IR requirements do vary if you are part 141, but absent proof that you went part 61 you could still apply the lower of the two requirements.

The FARs are generally written in the form "must have logged," so if you "must have logged," e.g., 50 hours PIC cross-country to get your instrument rating, of which at least 10 had to be in airplanes, then by having the instrument airplane rating on your PPL it is true for CPL purposes to say that you "must have logged" that time. Has anyone been unfortunate enough to have to find out how the FAA interprets this one? :)
Click to expand...
I don't know your specific situation, but the FAA has had guidance on lost logbooks for a long time. It's probably slightly out of date, but here's a writeup I did some years ago on it, with references.

I Lost My Logbook! What Do I Do?
 
midlifeflyer said:
I don't know your specific situation, but the FAA has had guidance on lost logbooks for a long time. It's probably slightly out of date, but here's a writeup I did some years ago on it, with references.

I Lost My Logbook! What Do I Do?
Click to expand...
Thankfully, my situation is purely hypothetical. I sincerely doubt that I will personally survive any event that takes out both my paper logbook and MFB. :) But I think your writeup does answer the hypothetical. The submitted 8710-1 effectively serves as an acceptable backup of the information contained on it.
 
As proud custodian of my grandfather's, father's, and uncle's log books (all deceased), I am dedicated to keeping my own logs on paper for posterity. We don't have many heirlooms or other mementos in my family, so I like having these. My son will inherit them after I'm gone.

I have thought occasionally about what would happen if I ever lost my logbooks, so thanks @midlifeflyer for posting the FAA guidance.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I have 6 logbooks spanning over 45 years. I'd like to switch, but converting to digital seems too daunting and time consuming to attempt. I'm too compulsive to just put the current times and start now, so I guess I'll just stick with paper.
 
Artimas said:
I have 6 logbooks spanning over 45 years. I'd like to switch, but converting to digital seems too daunting and time consuming to attempt. I'm too compulsive to just put the current times and start now, so I guess I'll just stick with paper.
Click to expand...
It's not going to be less time consuming later. When I went to myflightbook, I entered all my old time, but I didn't have that much. If I had six logbooks, I'd just do starting times. But you could always just go back six months or so, and then you'd at least have all your currency. Maybe start at your last FR or some other event.
 
Haven't seen it mentioned here, but I use Pilot Partner. I use PP, MyFlightBook, an Excel spreadsheet, and a paper log (all in the search for the best option for my uses). The interface Pilot Partner uses was a bit tricky at first while I transcribed data, but its pretty slick now.

MyFlightBook is decent, IMO, and is great for a free solution, but It's lacking something that I can't quite put my finger on.

I use the Excel spreadsheet for tracking things outside of currency (rating requirements, in addition to several other parameters I geek out on from time to time).

And the paper log is for nostalgia for when all of this cloud based hype wears off and we are back to navigating with compasses and stopwatches ;)
 
I'm a paper person too. I feel the same way about digital pictures. Unless you print them at some point, eventually they'll be lost when the electronic item they're stored on dies, or you die. So yes, I print the important ones of family.
 
AWACSEng said:
MyFlightBook is decent, IMO, and is great for a free solution, but It's lacking something that I can't quite put my finger on.

I use the Excel spreadsheet for tracking things outside of currency (rating requirements, in addition to several other parameters I geek out on from time to time).
Click to expand...
Let me know if you ever put your finger on what you think it's lacking. :)

Note that MyFlightbook does track progress towards ratings.
 
EricBe said:
Let me know if you ever put your finger on what you think it's lacking. :)

Note that MyFlightbook does track progress towards ratings.
Click to expand...

I certainly will! I'm not sure what it is. Of the electronic logbooks I've used, Pilot Partner has the slickest (if that's a word) interface, but I'm not sure I want to pay ~$30/yr for it.

MyFlightBook is a solid product, but it does seem a bit cumbersome to me when making log entries, a bit more user friendly than my excel product, though. I will say, for the price you offer for MyFlightBook, it is an awesome product!
 
In case you missed it or it wasn’t clear, @AWACSEng , @EricBe is the author of MyFlightBook. :)

Pilot Partner is also really sound and Ken V and team do a nice job on it, too. And he’s a really nice guy as well.

Never liked that ForeFlight added logging. I guess it was inevitable but there are so many great options out there, that by the time they added it, they were just cannibalizing the market others had jumped into first and did (and still do) better.

Even the goofy Mac software guy who kinda ripped off all the original users when he switched to a subscription model — I had some coin tied up in that thing, and don’t recommend it only because of his attitude during that switch — had decent stuff.

(I don’t recommend him for the same reason I don’t recommend Brightline Bags anymore either... no love for their initial customers after they got bigger and redid things...)

Anyway, it’s all orders of magnitude better than the stuff that was out back in the bad old Windows XP days, that’s for sure!
 
denverpilot said:
In case you missed it or it wasn’t clear, @AWACSEng , @EricBe is the author of MyFlightBook. :)

Pilot Partner is also really sound and Ken V and team do a nice job on it, too. And he’s a really nice guy as well.

Never liked that ForeFlight added logging. I guess it was inevitable but there are so many great options out there, that by the time they added it, they were just cannibalizing the market others had jumped into first and did (and still do) better.

Even the goofy Mac software guy who kinda ripped off all the original users when he switched to a subscription model — I had some coin tied up in that thing, and don’t recommend it only because of his attitude during that switch — had decent stuff.

(I don’t recommend him for the same reason I don’t recommend Brightline Bags anymore either... no love for their initial customers after they got bigger and redid things...)

Anyway, it’s all orders of magnitude better than the stuff that was out back in the bad old Windows XP days, that’s for sure!
Click to expand...
Yeah, I picked up on that. He has an awesome product, and I'm by no means a computer/code guy. I've tried the free trial of pretty much every pay to use e-log out there. Like I said, for the price he charges for MyFlightBook, it's by far the best bang for the buck. I also understand the pay ware sites have a much more robust budget to work with.
 
Another very satisfied MyFlightBook user. I usually have a flight logged before I've walked in off the ramp. I do a weekly update in a paper book, but I anticipate that will stop once I've gained non-flight instruction employment. There seems to be a significant portion of employers here in the low-end trenches that like paper. I also get all my students on MFB as well, makes record-keeping a breeze.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top